Banks the real cause of financial crash

STEVE Vickers correctly criticises the current Labour Party leadership for its admiration of the failed Venezuelan socialist government.

However - his claim that the Tony Blair government caused the financial crisis of 2008 is totally off the mark.

When Labour returned to power in 1997, the health and educational infrastructure of the nation was threadbare, with pupils sharing books, and patients lying in hospital corridors on trolleys.

This followed the truly terrible economic record of the previous Major government.

John Major spent more government money in seven years (£235 billion) than Gordon Brown did (£175 billion) in the 11 years leading up to the financial crisis in 2008.

The Tory government also increased the national debt from 22% of GDP to 37%, whereas Brown brought it down over his 11 years as Chancellor.

Labour had three consecutive years of budget surplus and had 10 years of continuous growth.

The financial crisis was not caused by Gordon Brown’s spending.

Otherwise there would have been a far greater crisis in 1996 following Major’s profligacy.

The cause of the crisis was the casino investment methods of the banks in the West, with their subprime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations.

There is no longer a serious financial analyst who blames the crisis record.

The Tories have been piling the blame on Labour as part of their political propaganda, but even they don’t believe it.

The only thing where Labour could be criticised is in not tightening Bank regulation enough.

But there again, the Tories thought that this regulation was already too tight.

In the meantime, the Labour Party, reluctant to attribute any element of success to the man who won three successive elections for them, meekly accepted the Conservative analysis, despite the facts proving that their hate figure’s government had a good record on the economy. on Labour’s economic Europhile